Easy Reads

I hate getting asked whether a book is an easy read or not. Getting asked that question is like a police officer asking three witnesses to the same crime; The police officer will get three varying accounts of said crime. An “easy read” for me is when I get a book finished in two to three days… And that really hasn’t happened in years. When that happens it’s because I’m REALLY INTO the story and I literally do nothing else that day except stay in my room and read.

I don’t really call the books I read anymore “easy reads.” Now that I’ve don fairly well in my reading challenge, I’ve finally figured out that getting a book read within a month is a “moderate” read for me. If it takes me longer than a month to complete a book, then it’s a more difficult read for me. However, this really all stems down to one reason: Am I in the mood to read this particular book in my possession? If I’m not, the book may sit to the side for a while before I pick it back up again.

When I first started watching Game of Thrones, it took me maybe a year before I finally decided to pick up the first novel the TV series was based on. I’m glad I did because it was an entertaining read and a fantastic world to immerse myself in. However, it took me literally the whole month I picked that book up to complete when I fully expected to have AGoT read within a week.

It wasn’t because Martin is a terrible writer or anything—every chapter I read was damn good—but it took me so long because the story is just so heavy. I knew half-way through that I’d want to read the next book, but by the end of the novel, I literally got a few pages into ACoK that I thought to myself, “I can’t read this right now.” It’s not that Martin isn’t a good author, it’s because there are a fuckton of characters in his story coupled with the fact that a crapload of shit is going on and 99.99% of it isn’t happy shit. So, the idea of going through that all over again was just daunting on me so I set ACoK aside and I haven’t picked it up since, lol. Mark my words, though. I fully intend to read the whole series because I want to know what I’m missing that isn’t getting put into the show, :P.

To make a long post short, my point is me trying to define a book as an easy read to someone else doesn’t work. What if I say, “Yeah, this book is totally an easy read! It was great!” Which encourages someone to pick up said book and read it and they don’t find it easy to read?

Originally posted via Tumblr on 9/14/14